


Now My Heart Stumbles On Things I Don't Know

by deathmallow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 67th Hunger Games, AU, Epilogue, F/M, Post-Mockingjay, Pre-THG, Shameless geese cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-03
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-03 00:27:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another fill for the Girl on Fire Ficathon: <i>haymitch/johanna, the heart beats in its cage</i>.</p><p>Edit 3/25/13: Added an "epilogue" prompt fill for those who wanted to know how this story ended.  :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Original Prompt (4/3/12)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chimneysmoke](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=chimneysmoke), [mathgirl24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathgirl24/gifts).



> Post-Mockingjay with some pre-THG, rated M for language and non-explicit sexual content, including underage/age difference, and mentions of forced prostitution. AUish.

She did give it an honest try with Gale. He was handsome and the sex was great, he was six years younger so she could keep the upper hand easily, and he had that fiery quality to him, that dark intensity that all at once made her want to laugh at him, little brooding philosopher, and then made her want to rip his clothes off.

Of course it was Katniss Everdeen that fucked it up. She’d hear Gale talking on the phone sometimes, heard the girl was back in Twelve in some kind of catatonic state, with a caretaker to feed her and bathe her and wipe her ass when needed. It was probably in that moment that Johanna genuinely ceased to give a shit about the precious little Mockingjay. Like the girl had some kind of monopoly on suffering and loss. Like her life somehow entitled her to just give up and everyone would scramble to feel sorry for her. 

“She’s had it rough,” Gale protested when she refused to join the little pity party. “She lost her sister, she was imprisoned--”

Johanna cut him off. “I lost my sister, my brother, my mother, and my father, and two weeks later I was expected to be busy sucking Capitol cock to keep the supply trains flowing to District Seven. I got tortured. If she’s that weak and wants to die that much, maybe we ought to just put her out of her misery.” If he wanted to roll around in his guilt about Primrose Everdeen that was on his own time. 

The sex that night was fantastic with as angry as they were but after that the wedge was there. He wouldn’t let Katniss go and she wouldn’t stand for him to be mooning about her like some stupid lovesick puppy. As the weeks went on she found more things that pissed her off about him. He could talk a good game, sincerely believe everything he said as he hit all the right notes about courage and honor and sacrifice. But she remembered Thirteen and how he’d had his mother and siblings all there, safe and sound, the family he still called every Sunday like clockwork. He didn’t know what it was like to lose, to have something precious stolen away by Capitol cruelty, to really sacrifice and deal with the consequences of it. Little wind-up toy soldier boy mouthing all the right words and not really understanding anything. 

“You’ll make a great citizen of Two,” she said as she walked out. He thanked her for that. He didn’t have much of an appreciation of irony either, come to think of it.

Beetee was busy in Three with his tinkering and she never much liked talking to Volts because it made her feel like she was being lectured at like a kid in school. Annie was raising little Junior or whatever she'd named him in Four and she didn’t want to see Finnick’s son. If she ever saw Enobaria again she would kill that bitch, no question. With no desire at all to see Katniss and knowing Peeta would inevitably be hanging around her, that left only one victor she could maybe talk to, one person who she had that bond with.

At least Haymitch was reliable for the hope of good snarky conversation and good sex. Assuming he wasn’t drunk off his ass. Assuming age or alcohol or both hadn't turned him into a lousy lay either.

~~~~~~~~~~

When she was seventeen, she fucked Haymitch Abernathy a little over an hour after meeting him. Or he fucked her. But she liked to think it was the former because it was her choice and her escape.

Blight had warned her, told her he’d done his turn through the Capitol whore deal for a few years as a new victor, but she’d been young and stupid and flush with her own cleverness at tricking them all in the arena. She hadn’t taken him nearly as seriously as she ought. Besides, “they’ll go after your people” was easy to sort of shrug off as a weakly non-specific warning. Now if he’d said, “They’ll arrange a little accident so they all die horribly,” she might have taken him a bit more seriously.

After she’d finally knuckled under and agreed to what Snow was demanding, Blight brought her to meet Haymitch. He cocked an eyebrow and drawled, “Shit, Blight, Mags already brought the Odair boy by yesterday to see me. Why am I suddenly being dubbed the Keeper of the Whores?”

“I’m not a whore,” she’d snapped at him.

He leveled her with an almost amused look. “I am. Blight was. And you will be soon enough, sweetheart.” She wanted to scratch his eyes out for that.

Blight sighed and said reluctantly, “Because you’re in the know from still being on the circuit and obviously Mags and me aren’t. Also, you’ve survived it this long. So we know you’ll look after them.”

At that point Haymitch was thirty-three, his good looks now starting to go just a bit ragged around the edges. From what Blight had told her on the way over to the apartment, he drank away most of the year at home but tended to still mostly make an effort to clean it up for the Games--which was largely a useless gesture when his tributes promptly died every year early in the running--and keeping his expected appointment book. All she knew before that was that he was the Twelve mentor who usually dressed in black compared to all the Capitol colors, and had smartmouthed comments at every interview that had people in the Capitol loving him for it, and his tributes always sucked. Haymitch eyed her and asked point blank, “So, who are they dangling over you? Sister? Mother?”

“My family’s all dead. There was an accident, at least they said it was an accident, when I said I wouldn’t...that I...” Her fingers curled into her palms, nails digging in.

That actually got a stunned look from him, and even if she didn’t understand what of his own experience was behind it back then she savored it, the first feeling of any power she had since the news came about the fire. “Then you’ve got to be very careful,” he told her simply, arrogant humor fading as he crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her. “You’ve become an object lesson and he takes those seriously.” 

She’d been sold already and was due for her first appointment the next night. “All right, here it is, girl. Gaius Luna isn’t the worst of the lot, he’s pretty straightforward. You’ve got a few options here. You can accept it and just wait to fuck Luna tomorrow. Or you can sleep with someone else before that. It ain’t much but it’s the best you’ll get, knowing he wasn’t the first, and that’s still better than we got back in the day, right Blight?” Blight nodded, looking unsettled still, eyes flicking between Johanna and Haymitch. “For that opportunity, you can thank your stalwart mentor there for us victors having this nice little trysting apartment.” He smirked at Johanna conspiratorially. “The Peacekeepers at Mentor Central got real tired of having to listen to him and Clover screwing around in our lounge and complained.”

“Fuck you, Haymitch,” Blight growled, cheeks rapidly growing red. She was trying hard to not do the same. Back then she’d been definitely a bit softer, a lot more innocent.

Haymitch just laughed at his discomfort. “So, if you want, you and Finnick Odair could take care of each other’s little virginity issue. Or you find someone else. But it has to be someone you can trust to keep his--or her, if that’s what you’re into--mouth shut about it. Blight, for instance.”

“Haymitch. C’mon,” Blight protested nervously, glancing at Johanna.

“Fuck you, Blight. Were you hoping I’d do the honors? _You’re_ her mentor.” He seemed almost pissed off at that.

“Why not?” Now both of them turned to eye her as she spoke up. “I don’t want to...fuck,” and it was amazing how hard the word “fuck” came from her lips back then, ”Luna as my first. If he’s a virgin Finnick’s probably not going to know what he’s doing.” He’d won the year before her and he was only sixteen. Attractive as he was, she didn’t want it to be all horrible and fumbling when the situation was awkward enough. “And I grew up around Blight so it’d be kind of like screwing my uncle or something. I don’t know you so it wouldn’t be weird like that, and I assume you’re good so it wouldn’t be lousy.”

Another of those laughs came from Haymitch and he pressed his hands, palms together, to his lips as he chuckled. “Oh, my my. She throws a mean axe--I’m a real fan of that, by the way-- _and_ she’s got a brain in there. A real winner.”

“Shut up, Haymitch!” she snapped at him, tired of feeling like he was laughing at her and making jokes she couldn’t even hope to understand when she was the one facing this. “You think this is funny?”

He eyed her now with something that almost verged on respect. “Not in the least. But learn to laugh at it or it’ll break you soon enough.”

“Do you really know what you’re doing? In bed, I mean?” she added hastily.

“I’ve had a good bit of enforced practice, so yes,” he said dryly. “You sure that’s what you actually want, sweetheart?”

“No,” she said, “but it’s the best that I can have.” Now she was pretty sure it was actual respect in his eyes as he nodded.

So Blight left them to it and soon enough there she was, naked and on top of Haymitch Abernathy. His hands stroking her skin and and guiding her, that rough voice all velvet in her ear as he said, “That’s it, sweetheart,” as she panted and gasped at the feel of him inside her. He definitely knew what he was doing and he made it good for her, she’d give him that. The next night, lying under a grunting and sweating Gaius Luna, it helped to have experienced that.

He gave her advice on how to survive, how to keep sane. She tried to ask him to fuck her again the next week, after a few appointments that were also complete disappointments. He told her, “Not a good idea for you to keep at it with me.”

“It’s not like I’m gonna fall in love with you, old man,” she snapped at him, feeling the embarrassed burn of rejection. She just wanted it to feel good again and he'd managed to do that. He was safe, that was all.

“Smart girl,” he said simply, and headed back to his mentor console.

So instead she ended up fucking Finnick on one of the couches in the lounge, and it felt good and clean and honest in a way none of the appointments had. She was actually just about to come when the door opened and Haymitch walked in. He quirked one of those dark eyebrows and just said, “Pretty sure I mentioned we’ve got an apartment for this.” 

He shook his head at them. “Finish up and then go keep an eye on your damn tributes, you two. I’ll be back in ten minutes and I expect to get some sleep.” Because he was the only Twelve mentor and couldn’t hand it over to a partner and go off-shift to sleep in his bed at the Training Center, until his tributes were out of it, he slept on a couch in the lounge so he’d always be ready to jump into action.

He muttered, “They grow up so fast,” and even if his tone was utterly sarcastic the expression on his face was suddenly tired.

Come to think of it, that was the year Haymitch really started to slip and fall a few steps behind the pace when it came to the drinking and in hiding the fact that his constant mockery of people in the Capitol wasn’t affectionately witty like they thought but fiercely contemptuous. 

When she thought about it later, she supposed it could well have been the fact that taking her and Finn under his wing and suddenly feeling responsible for their continued welfare and sanity, trying to protect them as best he could, burned through whatever reserves he had left after enduring all those dead tributes.

It probably also didn’t help that year was the closest he came to mentoring a victor until Katniss and Peeta. His girl came in fourth that year and they all saw her die slowly over the course of nearly a full day from a slow-acting poison that had been planted in some of the feast food. He didn’t move away from his console the entire time and he looked like he aged years just sitting there.

The next year at the Games she and Finn were screwing each other regularly, and Haymitch was full-blown drunk more than he was just tipsy. She didn't last long as a whore. Haymitch kept cover with snarky wit and Finn with seductive decadence, and they lapped that up. Instead she made herself all sharp edges and sarcasm, ran around in skimpy clothing that hid nothing at all and challenged them to still want to pay for her. Thankfully, they didn't. _Smart girl_ , Haymitch told her again a few years later with a trace of a smile.

~~~~~~~~~~ 

In Twelve, or what used to be Twelve, she asked for directions to the Victor’s Village and of course they assumed she was there for Katniss. Grinding her teeth, she just didn’t answer and found Haymitch’s house, after getting attacked by a goose that honked at her as she walked up the path.

“Shut up and behave, shit-for-brains!” came that familiar rough twang. He swung open the door and stared at her. A little too thin, hair still a little too shaggy. Mostly sober at the moment. “Let me guess. You and Hawthorne broke up. And Beetee’s too odd and Finn’s too dead so here you are at my door for...what exactly?”

She hit him for that because that was how it worked with victors, they just solved it with violence. Or fucking or drugs or booze. He wiped his bleeding lip with one thumb, glanced at the stain of red, and laughed at her. “Good to see you too, Jo.” 

It irritated her, what they’d said about him down in the village. How nice it was he was here to be support for Katniss. How he let some random geese roam his yard. How he seemed to just live quietly enough.

She’d seen him during the Quell, how alive he’d been, thriving off the tension and danger of what was in the works, and during the rebellion in Thirteen. This was the man who’d talked every damn one of them into being willing to lay down their lives. He’d made a joke out of the Gamemakers by making two different arenas into his tools. He’d masterminded a rebellion. And now he was going to just wait around this boneyard of a district in case Katniss Everdeen maybe somehow needed him someday for something.

Was that really all? Didn’t he have anything of his own, any kind of a life? It struck her that it seemed like he didn’t. Maybe that really was his life in his mind, only what use he could be to others. Mentor. Jailer and caretaker to the Mockingjay. Conspirator. Rebel leader. Keeper of the Whores. All he saw was what he could sell himself as to others, how he could please them, and it looked like he was too damn scared to simply try to have anything for himself. 

She wondered if there was anything of Haymitch, an actual man, left in him, or if he’d sold it all just so he wouldn’t have to try. “You’re more of a whore than Finnick ever was,” she told him. At least Finnick kept something back only for himself. He dared to fall in love and have a kid and forge something of his own life, even if it made her want to hate Annie a bit for it. She’d loved Finnick first, damn it.

He gave a snort of amusement at that. “I did it for twice as long, so you’re really surprised?” Boredly and arrogantly amused: she knew his whore’s voice when she heard it.

She kissed him, crashed into him hard enough that she caught his gasp of surprise with her own mouth, feeling the rasp of stubble against her skin and tasting the blood all iron-sharp from his split lip and hint of the whiskey he’d been drinking.

Yanking at his shirt buttons, she figured she’d see if she couldn’t somehow fuck him to being back among the living. They hadn’t fought a revolution for freedom and seen all but seven of the victors killed off in the purges just so he could refuse to actually live in any meaningful way. If he did that it all had no point. Coward. Katniss could give up and Johanna didn't much care, but to see Haymitch fade was too much.

The thought that she might be afraid to lose one of the last people she actually gave a shit about was shoved away into a corner of her mind and told to shut the hell up. She fumbled for his belt buckle, and laughed against his mouth to feel his own hands diving underneath her shirt.

She wasn’t seventeen and ignorant any longer and this time she set the pace. It must have been a while for him since didn’t take him that long, and as he groaned and shivered against her she could easily make a joke about that, about how he’d apparently really needed a good lay. Instead she just lay there, body pressed to his, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart beating away within the sturdy cage of his ribs. So he'd kept it locked up good and tight but maybe it wasn't dead yet. “Huh.”

He looked up at her quizzically, not understanding. “Best greeting I’ve had in years, sweetheart, but any particular reason you came all this way to punch me and then fuck me on my kitchen floor?” 

“Just making sure you’re still alive,” she said, climbing off him.

“Still alive,” he confirmed, still looking puzzled, and grunted in irritation as he got up, straightening his clothes and smoothing down his tousled black hair. “If you’re taking a notion towards doing this again,” a faint question and a faint doubt in his voice, “may I humbly suggest we consider a bed. I ain’t as young as I used to be.”

He needed shoving back into the realm of the living and maybe she needed to prove to herself that she could be the one to do it because if she could get him going maybe that meant she wasn’t near as broken as she thought. She was used to being the runner-up by now, the one they fucked and then threw aside to go worship at some other girl’s feet. Annie had claimed Finnick and Katniss had her claws well into Gale. Fuck if she’d let Haymitch wreck himself by existing only for the Girl on Fire too. “I just want to be the one that comes first for once,” she told him one night. No context to clue him in, of course, just a frustrated remark fueled by whiskey that she didn’t want to explain the moment she said it, because it left her too soft and too exposed.

If he’d made some snarky remark about how he did his best to make sure of it every time they had sex, she’d have wanted to slap the smirk off his face. As was, he just leaned in and poured her another glass, glancing at her face and not saying anything.

When she gave herself the usual spit bath, rather than pull Gale’s tactic of suggesting she needed to just conquer her fears and learn to use the shower again, he took up the washcloth and did her back for her. He still slept with a knife close at hand, so he understood some fears never went away. 

One night he kissed the scars the Capitol torturers left on her, the ones she would never let them erase now. 

Another night she’d left his back raked by her nails, seeing the red lines of it as he slept, and remembered that he’d stepped in that first year at a dungeon party to take the whip strokes and worse so she and Finn wouldn’t have to do it.

When she egged him on one day at breakfast he proved he really would do anything for the last of the blueberry jam. 

Going all sex-stupid as she was because of course it was about the sex, it eventually began to dawn on her she might have done something really dumb in barging in like this. She could see flickers of it in his grey eyes sometimes when he was less guarded, the pleasure of having her around and the fear of losing it. Felt the subtle pull of longing from him at times. Haymitch was still alive in there, all right, and growing stronger, and fuck, she didn’t want to be the one to hurt him because of all people she should be the one he could trust. She needed to clear her head and figure out how to go forward because just barreling into it would be a disaster. Somehow it had actually started to matter to her.

So she bought a train ticket and that morning thought about just sneaking out, thought about writing him a note, thought about going back upstairs and slipping back into bed. Then he came down to make coffee and caught her there because of course he didn’t sleep normal hours she could rely on.

“Leaving?” he asked neutrally, throwing a dash of liquor in his mug and shoving another one across the table to her. She wrapped her fingers around it.

“Figured you’d be happy to be rid of me. Your booze supply’s obviously gone to hell with me here.”

“Nah, it’s lasted a good bit longer than it would with me drinking solo, actually.” Oh, damn him, hitting her right between the eyes with something like that. But he was right, while he definitely took a glass here and there or a slosh in his coffee, lately he was about as sober as she'd seen him, Thirteen with its enforced sobriety excepted. “And you’ve put the fear into that pair of honking shit factories that invaded my yard so I count that as a point in your favor.” Like she hadn’t seen how he put a fence around their eggs so they wouldn’t get eaten. Stupidly secretly sentimental Haymitch, always trying to protect any kid that had been put in his hands. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” he said carefully. He didn’t quite look at her and she had the feeling if he did the plea of _Stay_ would be right there in his eyes and it would kill her.

“C’mon, I’m only going to Seven. I’ll be back in a month with the next train.”

“Bring some jam, you ate all mine,” he said with that cover of flippancy, now glancing up and his expression saying, _You won’t be back_.

She pressed his shoulder with her hand and leaned down to kiss him. Startled at first, he turned his face to hers, and one hand moved to touch her cheek. Had she kissed him before just for its own sake rather than as a prelude to sex? Maybe not. “I’ll be back. With your stupid jam.”


	2. Coda Prompt (3/25/13)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost a year later, a small coda for those who asked back when I posted this story because they wanted to know how it ended. :) 
> 
> From a prompt on Tumblr by mathgirl24 asking for _Wed me- chars discussing marriage, Haymitch/Johanna, canon_
> 
> Thanks so much, JT, for that prompt and giving me a chance to revisit my first Hayhanna story, first attempt at adult Haymitch, and first attempt at Johanna. My writing for both of these two has come a long way since then with HID and AFAF, but giving a little closure to them with this ficlet felt pretty damn good. :)

The morning seemed just like any other, quiet and peaceful as Haymitch looked at Johanna across the breakfast table. He hadn’t expected to see her again. But she’d surprised him. A month ago, she’d come back, groused, “Here’s your stupid jam, like I promised,” plunked down an entire case of jars of blueberry jam on the kitchen table, and kicked off her shoes, careless as ever where they landed. Acted just like she’d walked down to the Exchange to do some bartering and she’d only been gone for an hour rather than leaving six weeks ago on a train.

Summer would be yielding to fall soon. The district was getting rebuilt, slow but steady. A woman who knew her way around lumber had been worth her weight in gold on that task. She was talking about the house they were working on now and that was good, the aches and tiredness at the end of the day were nothing against looking at the timber skeleton of a house framed against the dusk and knowing he’d actually done something useful with his day. He wasn’t fanciful enough to imagine the family that might live there, but quietly, he was grateful she’d kicked his ass out the door that first day and just expected him to come to the build site. Work kept his days busy, and she kept his nights far sweeter than he’d expected, and it wasn’t just about the sex. Just the company alone was blissful.

Scraping the last of the jar of jam, he raised an eyebrow and commented, “Gonna need to open another jar tomorrow.”

She glanced over at him, raising her coffee mug to her lips and taking a sip. “Your fault. You eat it like such a damn hungry bear I can barely even get any.” Blueberry jam was one of the few things he always had a taste for, the childhood memories when a dollop of it was one of the few treats he could dream of having.

Glancing down at the piece of toast and the thick layer of jam on it, he rolled his eyes. “Fine. Never let it be said I don’t do anything for you.” With an elaborate, flourishing bow, he presented her the piece of toast he’d intended to eat.

She reached out and took the toast from his hand. Taking a bite, she gave him a sly grin. “So, are we married now?”

He stared at her. “What?”

“Kittycat.” She took another bite. “She told me about your whole toast thing. Whenever Hotbuns asks her, of course.” Johanna gave a swift shrug. “You give me your toast, means we’re married, right?”

He was about to tell her that wasn’t quite how a toasting went, that it was just a piece of toast and no need to tease, when he saw how she was watching him. Her eyes were careful, almost wary, as if his answer actually mattered to her.

He had never thought to ask, to make it permanent. He’d known she could go away again, had frankly expected it someday when she realized she deserved better, that she could have better. But she’d come back when he hadn’t expected that.

The fear of trying to believe in something real and lasting was suddenly right there. He didn’t deserve that. He might well fail, he’d already failed her in too many ways during the war. Having something precious like that to lose, something that was only his own, terrified him. 

But she’d come back. She’d come here and pushed and bossed and demanded, typical Johanna, and she’d carved out a place for herself in his life and given him that gossamer-fragile hope. If she left again, if he let her leave, the hole would be too deep to bear. He realized that maybe she needed to belong too, to have him offer her that. He looked over at her. “Do you think you’ll want to go away again?” he asked her bluntly.

Green-tinged brown eyes held his steadily. “No,” she said, barely more than a whisper. “Not unless you’re tired of me nagging you, old man.” 

“Don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of that.” He reached out, and took the toast from her hand. He took a bite of it, seeing the look on her face and the smile she was trying to hide that probably matched his own. The blueberry jam had never seemed sweeter, particularly when he tasted it on her lips when he leaned over to kiss her.

**Author's Note:**

> My first crack at Johanna here, so hopefully semi-reasonable.
> 
> Original prompt here: http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html?thread=866660#t866660
> 
> Amazing prompts in this ficathon. Go write some of 'em.


End file.
